by margaret on May 26, 2010
By Marion Roach Smith
AS FAR BACK as she can remember, all writer Alix Strauss ever wanted were siblings—especially an older sister. “I think my whole world would have been different if I’d had someone there to keep a watchful eye, to be my best friend and a life-long witness,” Alix reported when TSP reached out to talk about her work. “According to my mother, when I was three or four, I asked her why I didn’t have a sister and could she please get me one so I wouldn’t be lonely. I think this became some of the themes in my work—longing, and a need for connection.” [click to continue…]
From the collaborative project "FE-MAIL"
ARTIST, EDUCATOR AND YOGI Karen Arp-Sandel is on a mixed-media mission. Whether “getting gluey” constructing collage and assemblage pieces, sketching and painting landscapes, or instructing students in the finer points of downward dog and sun salutations, Karen wants everyone she encounters through her art to embrace her mantra: “Art is NOT separate.” [click to continue…]
by margaret on April 1, 2010
By Marion Roach Smith
STYLE.” “SYMPATHY.” “WISE.” “Luminous.” “Compassionate.” “Wit.” These are words taken from rave reviews of Zoe FitzGerald Carter’s book, Imperfect Endings, to which I can only add, “astonishing,” after reading the memoir recounting her mother’s decision to die with dignity. Employing a combination of humor, grace and wisdom, Zoe drives us to toward understanding what is at stake for a family when the stakes are as high as they get. In her recent correspondence with The Sister Project, Zoe was equally brave and direct, answering our questions about how their mother’s decision affected Zoe and her two sisters. What emerges is a portrait of sisterhood unlike any I’ve read. I think you’ll agree. [click to continue…]
by margaret on February 26, 2010
By Marion Roach Smith
IT’S NOT TRUE that Meg Waite Clayton wrote the book on sisterhood. In fact, she has published not one but two, and has just sent the third to her editor. “The emotional turf I seem to go back to again and again is sisterhood in the friendship sense,” Meg, the author of the national bestseller The Wednesday Sisters, told me during a recent email exchange. [click to continue…]
by margaret on December 14, 2009
By Margaret Roach
Matchboxes and tissue-box covers decoupaged with sistery ephemera.
THE SISTER PROJECT ON THIS PAGE STARTED WITH A LAMPSHADE. True. I brought a lamp in need of a new shade in to a local shop called Shandell’s, where owner Susan Schneider makes custom shades and other things out of vintage and vintage-inspired papers and fabrics. In the process of picking material to recover my shade, I caught a glimpse of Susan’s treasure trove of ephemera—things collected over 20 years by this self-professed “packrat”—and thought wow, what a sister story some of the bits could probably tell. I guess I said it out loud, and my offhand remark got Susan thinking. [click to continue…]
by margaret on November 19, 2009
THIS SISTER CAN REALLY WIELD A NEEDLE AND ALSO THE LOVE, whether in her practice as a small-town country doctor in Canada or in her nature-inspired crafting—weblike crochet work, charming embroidery on thick, colorful felt, and all manner of sewing and knitting creations. Margie (short for Margaret) Oomen is the gentle genius behind the popular blog Resurrection Fern, and a force of nature herself online among the web’s most creative pairs of hands. [click to continue…]
by margaret on November 5, 2009
'Bite Me' cookbook authors, sisters Lisa (left) and Julie
By Marion Roach Smith
THE SISTERS DIDN’T SO MUCH AS DROP THEIR WHISKS when I reached them while they are out on book tour. It seems they can type with kitchen utensils in their mouths, while packing and running off to the next interview, making me adore them even more than I already did after reading about their new cookbook entitled Bite Me. [click to continue…]
by margaret on September 10, 2009
Photographer Erica Berger is the longtime best sister-friend of TSP’s Margaret Roach. We asked her to share the images she did for People magazine in 2001 of a sisterhood formed by loss, that of the 9/11 widows, to mark the eighth anniversary. Let Erica tell the story, and let her slides speak for themselves.
By Erica Berger
WHEN I WAS ASSIGNED THE PROJECT by People magazine, I was reminded of what my mother asked me years ago when I worked at The Miami Herald: “Why do they always give you the religion and dying stories?” [click to continue…]
by Anastasia on August 18, 2009
By Marion Roach Smith
"Chelsy & Melissa"
REDHEADS NOTE ONE ANOTHER on the street. We check each other’s freckle distribution and eye color. And while no redhead goes unnoticed in any room, it is only another redhead who notices these exact details. Rare as we are, we are always on the lookout for another of our breed. Maybe it’s because we’ve heard so many sentences that begin, “Typical redhead, you’re so….” Artists have always noticed us, too, and though perhaps the artist who loved us most was Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti, an artist we adore these days is photographer Julia Baum, who, for nearly two years, has been working on a portrait series called “A Rare Breed,” consisting entirely of natural redheads (like herself). [click to continue…]
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